Sports commentators try to make us feel invested in the overall sports event which they cover. They do that by telling us stories of sympathetic contestants, bios, backstories and tales of struggles and sacrifices that the athlete, the family and the entire town had to make. We feel what it is like to be in a family in which X sport is a birthright or a completely alien avenue. Our hero is either the stand-out who is doing the impossible or the next part of a dynasty with the weight of history on his or her shoulders.
But what about all the others? A little digging would reveal that every one at the Olympics has a story to tell. Every competitor had it tough, spent the time, lost the childhood. You will never see a thirty-second highlight reel that starts, "Meet Adolph. He grew up a child of privilege and never had to work hard to be better at most everything than everyone else. He qualified for 3 events at this Olympics but chose the High Dive, for which he earned Gold, because, as he said 'it gave me the most time to work on my novel between the times that I had to do that jumpy thing into the pool.' "
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